Vladislav Yemchenko opened the scoring very quickly from mid-range – and a few seconds later brought it to 5:0, thanks to Kirill Temirov, who made a steal. Lokomotiv easily repelled two attacks from Samara, Andrey Martyuk opened up twice under the opponent’s basket – and now it’s 9:0 and the guests’ timeout is in the 2nd minute.
Only after that were the Volga players able to score their first points – Andrey Sopin did it from beyond the arc. Viktor Kashin made another long-range shot in – but Martyuk also scored a three-pointer. And when it was time for substitutes to get into play, Loko’s bench continued being merciless to the opponent, and Samara clearly didn’t have enough resources for a decent response. Dmitry Uzinsky performed a dunk, Danil Sheyanov finished off an alley-oop from Mikhail Vedischev – the score by the end of the first quarter was quite eloquent, 34:9.
Martyuk continued to dominate in the posts at the start of the 2nd quarter, doing a great job of getting away from his defenders in the paint and dunking time after time. By the 15th minute, Andrey had already scored 21 points. But Samara was also more energetic: Sopin scored from afar at the very end of the possession, Ilya Platonov scored 5 points in a row. However, Loko continued to steadily pull away. Isaiah Whaley dunked after interception; Yemchenko burst into the paint and scored a tricky layup through a forest of hands; Sheyanov was accurate from the very corner, Vedishchev – from 9 meters. The teams went into the big break with the score 61:25 in favor of the hosts.
The teams started the third quarter a bit lazily, scoring only 6 points between them in the first 4 minutes. With Uzinsky’s entry, the game came alive: the captain put the ball back to the basket after Martyuk’s throw, then Martyuk and Sheyanov started scoring as well, and then Mikhail Vedishchev fired from beyond the arc. At the end of these ten minutes, Lokomotiv pulled away a little more, 81:37.
In the 4th quarter, the coaches of the Krasnodar team let everyone invited from the reserve team play. Semyon Medvedev, Artem Chevarenkov (who, by the way, celebrates his 28th birthday today, congrats!) scored their first points for the main team of Lokomotiv, Daniil Kosko worked great in defense. Anton Kvitkovskikh looked great, who in the end was only 1 rebound short of a double-double. Martyuk rested in the final period of the game, having already scored his impressive 25+14. In the last minute, Lokomotiv came close to the 100-point mark – and Vedishchev reached it with a mid-range shot!
Lokomotiv Kuban will play their next game at home – and it will be a super hot battle against CSKA! We play on Sunday, March 16, at 2:30 PM. There are still a few tickets left, hurry to buy them!